Evaluating and Applying Relevant BCM Standards

When it comes to business continuity (BC), identifying and applying the right standards for your specific needs is definitely NOT a “one size fits all” solution.

In fact, the answer is typically not a single standard, but a combination of industry regulations, broader BC guidelines, and best practices that collectively satisfy the particular concerns of your industry or application. (For brevity, I refer to all of those resources under the general term of “standards.”)

The process of evaluating, mapping, and synthesizing standards into a universal framework was initially demonstrated in the form of the original BCP Genome™, prepared by Strategic® BCP in 2006 and updated multiple times since then.

While the original BCP Genome specifically benefits users of Strategic BCP’s ResilienceONE® business continuity management (BCM) software, you can follow the same logic to create your own framework of references relative to your unique business continuity needs.

The seven examples shown above demonstrate differences in focus among various BCP standards. In all, the BCP Genome synthesizes a total of 30 standards into 101 unique points of coverage, across eight major categories of business continuity practice.